


Human Credentials

by Scarlet



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Adventure, Angst and Humor, Clones, Conspiracy, F/M, MSR, Mytharc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 1998-10-13
Updated: 1998-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-06 14:54:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4226118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarlet/pseuds/Scarlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about faith, identity... and camels.</p><p>As both agents decide to forget what almost happened in that hallway, Scully sinks into a clinical depression which had just been waiting to happen. The fact that Mulder resumed his relationship with Diana is not helping. A mysterious letter sends him on another wild goose chase in a country far far away. Scully and Fowley temper their mutual animosity and join forces to find him. The agents will find out that traveling can be a mind altering experience, in the true sense of the word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Credentials

_**  
**_

 

_"For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of paradise."_

_\- Coleridge -_

 

Mulder stretched his arms above his head, stifled a yawn and stood up.

"Well, I'm beat, see you tomorrow, Scully." He grabbed his coat and began to make his way towards the exit of the bullpen.

Silence.

"Scully?"

He stopped to cast her a look over his shoulder. His partner seemed to be absorbed in expenses reports.

She didn't even bother to lift her head. "I heard you, Mulder. Good night."

Something was wrong, but he couldn't quite pinpoint what. Her tone hadn't been more sharp than it usually was when she didn't want to be interrupted. Still...

"Aren't you going home, Scully? It's pretty late."

She finally threw him a quick irritated glance above her glasses. "Mulder, mothering me is not part of your job description."

All right then. "Fine. Good night, Scully,"

He left. Fox Mulder had better things to do than investigate the reasons behind his partner's short temper.

The bullpen door clanged shut behind him.

Dana Scully let out a tired sigh, removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes wearily.

She could feel a headache coming.

Things had changed.

And she wasn't just talking about their new position within the FBI.

Mulder had been furious when he'd learned that Agent Spender was going to replace him on the X-Files. He had tried everything he could to prevent this from happening - and failed, as usual...

As for her - well, faith in their quest had been sorely shaken by their reassignment.

"If I quit now, they win." Yeah, what a joke. Without the X-Files they were powerless. How presumptuous of her to think that they could have made a difference anyway. The battle was over before it even began.

She'd gone home, days had gone by. She had discovered what it was to be a normal field agent. To work from 9 to 5 in a lab or in a bullpen, from autopsies to paperwork and back. To come back to her apartment early, to have time for herself, time to think - too much, far too much for her own good.

The last few months had been awkward.

Since they'd come back from their Antarctic trip, there had been a tension between them, and not the kind of healthy tension that had always been there, the electric undercurrent that created the sparks on which they fed one another, that kept them going through whatever ordeal the cases brought. No, this time it was more as if they just couldn't connect anymore, as if they had suddenly become strangers.

She knew why. He was healing. She was not.

Mulder now had other... connections.

At first they had avoided one another, uncomfortable with the latest events. Over the years they had become experts at avoiding what hit too close to home - or rather, in that case, stung too close.

So they both had looked the other way as if nothing had ever happened in that hallway. And Mulder's eyes had settled on Agent Fowley...

Agent Fowley.

It had been so easy for him. She'd come back, she'd known him before (before you), she'd assessed the extent of the damage and decided to mend him. An offer he just couldn't refuse.

An offer Scully couldn't make.

Nurse Fowley had launched herself body and soul in this arduous task. Body, especially.

It wasn't jealousy.

OK, it was jealousy, but not only.

No, she felt left out. Somehow the fact that he had been as emotionally messed up as she was had been a kind of support, like a stick of rotting driftwood to a shipwrecked man.

Without him, she was drowning.

She'd gradually inherited her partner's peculiar night-time activities: hardly any sleep, too many nightmares, topped with a personal touch of nausea. Next thing she knew, she would be renting the same videos. Her lips curved into a wan smile; she stood up and closed her laptop. (You're not that desperate, Dana.)

No, but she was tired, exhausted, washed out - and alone, acutely so. It was as if the outside world were gradually receding like a tide, its sounds muffled by the translucent walls of the tower she'd carefully designed.

Nowadays it felt more and more like a padded cell.

And inside Dana Scully was screaming.

~~~

 

She stood within the cave, its ceiling so high she could barely make out the ragged shape of the stone in the near darkness. She could feel its presence around her, welcoming her, the newborn child. It didn't scare her anymore, but she'd kept just enough of humanity to realize that she should have been afraid, very afraid.

The Old Tenant was back, and was eager to redecorate the place in a way more appropriate to its lifestyle. A lifestyle only suited for him - but the neighbours didn't know that yet, or didn't want to know, whichever.

Except one - and she would need more than a knock on his door to rouse him. But she had to.

For old times' sake...

~~~

 

"You look worried, Fox."

Mulder looked at the hand softly resting on his forearm and dropped the remote control he was holding. "It's nothing."

"How is she?"

He lifted his head and stared at the woman lying on the bed beside him.

Diana Fowley suppressed a smile. It didn't take an expert to grasp the implications of six years of partnership. She'd read their files; she knew what they'd been through together. And she understood that her presence caused a drastic change of dynamic in their weird relationship.

She didn't feel guilty about it, but suspected that, on some level, he did.

When they had started dating back at the academy, he had been too driven by his demons to allow her to stick around, too intense. She had known then that his restlessness would consume her. She was a practical person and, as much as she'd loved him she hadn't been willing to pay the price.

She had left that job to the little doctor.

And come back to find a broken but tamer Mulder. A man now willing to listen. She had enfolded him in her arms and started putting the pieces back together. Now that the crazy castle of his mind had been shattered it was easier to rebuild on more stable grounds.

He slept, his nightmares were less and less frequent, they talked a lot, something she suspected he didn't do often. And of course, they had sex, which she knew judging by his initial nervousness, he hadn't done with another person, in a long, long time.

"She's - not well," he said after a while. 

"Did you talk to her?"

Mulder turned his head sharply, looking at her as if she were a five year old asking an utterly stupid question.

Diana lifted herself on the pillows, sitting up. "Mulder - maybe she expects you to."

He let out a joyless chuckle. "I know what her answer would be if I did."

"What?"

"'I'm fine'."

"I see. She doesn't let you in."

"Doctor Scully never lets anybody in; wouldn't want people to notice she has weaknesses like the rest of us," he smirked. "She's scared shitless of letting her goddamned walls down."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I don't know."

"I do."

Mulder propped himself on one arm and graced her with a sceptical smile. "Oooh! Enlighten me, Agent Fowley."

"She depends on you. Too much for her own liking."

He snorted. "Well if she does, she's doing a damn good job at hiding it. Shall I remind you, that, a few months ago she was ready to walk out on me."

"Because she was afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

Diana threw him a pointed look. 

"Of me?" He asked, wide-eyed. 

"Let's face it Fox you're not the most reliable or stable person I know."

He smirked at that, Diana had a point.

"True...still, I've shown her more than once that I needed her. Hell, I even told her!"

"And now she feels typecast."

His eyebrows shot up. "Huh?"

"She thinks it's part of her job to take care of you. And she hates the fact that in the process, she's become dependent on you as well."

"That's bullshit. She's the most self-sufficient person I know."

Diana pinned him with a dark, scrutinizing gaze. "What is she to you?"

Mulder sat up to face her, looking bewildered. "What she...? Er - she's my partner, my friend..."

Fowley waved an irritated hand. "Oh please! Enough with the generic terms. Don't give me that "She's-The-Only-Person-I-Trust" bullshit!"

He opened his mouth to protest.

"That's what she is, isn't she?" Diana cut him, "Dr. Dana Scully, faithful partner and dedicated friend, always there to save your ass and patch you up."

He clenched his jaw, feeling the anger rise. "It's not like that!"

"Really? Go on, tell me then, what is it like?" she pushed him.

He clenched his fists on the comforter. She was so wrong, so wrong. Wasn't she? "It's more complex than that."

Diana snorted. "Right. Keep telling yourself that, Fox!"

Mulder took the pillow behind him and gave it an angry punch before letting his body drop like a dead weight on the bed.

She grabbed his shoulder, forcing him to look at her. "Can't you see? You put her on a fucking pedestal and now she's afraid she'll break if she jumps down."

Mulder's patience had reached its limit. He jumped off the bed. "For God's sake, shut up!"

She froze.

"I don't even know why you're doing this." He paced the room rubbing his neck roughly. "Shit, Diana, what are you getting out of this?"

She stood up, approached him cautiously. He stopped his pacing and eyed her warily. She grabbed both of his hands gently, gave them a little squeeze. "I'm merely trying to help you, that's all. So you can have a better grasp on the situation. I know how much this is bothering you," she answered softly.

His lips curved into a hint of a smile; he just couldn't stay angry at her. She had a kind of soothing power over him, always had. "You shouldn't care about how she feels."

She arched a teasing brow. "You mean I should be jealous?"

He grinned. "Aren't you?"

She wrapped her arm around his waist and dragged him back to bed. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because... you're sleeping in *my* bed, Agent Mulder."

Thus ended the conversation, and she was grateful that he didn't try to tell her that she had no reason to be jealous. Both of them were smart enough to know that it would have been nothing more than a comforting lie.

 ~~~

 

The phone was ringing insistently on Dana Scully's bedside table. A small hand slowly appeared over the sheets and made its clumsy way towards the sound. 

"Lo?"

"Scully?"

"Ummfff..."

Mulder's voice boomed at the other end. "Wake up Sunshine!"

Scully winced, moving the handset away from her ear, and tried to get enough coordination to prop herself up on the pillows. "Mulder, it's Saturday," she grumbled.

"And the Scully species doesn't have breakfast on Saturdays?"

Her brain was not awake enough to make sense of his words, so she went for the autopilot option.

"Where are you?"

"At your front door."

Her eyes went from half shut to wide open in an instant. "What?"

"Can I come in?"

She let out a deep sigh which ended in a yawn. "Will you go away if I say no?"

"I would but I don't think I can run back with an armful of coffee and doughnuts."

"Coffee?"

"See, I even know the magic word and..."

His cheerfulness was grating her nerves. "Do what you want," she almost snapped before hanging up.

She let herself sink back onto the pillows with an arm thrown over her eyes.

A few minutes later, Mulder gently knocked at her bedroom door.

No answer.

"Scully?"

He opened the door to step inside cautiously. 

In the dim light he could make out the shape of his partner under a heap of sheets and blankets, lying on her stomach with her head buried under a pillow.

He went to open the curtains slightly. "I gather you're still not a morning person."

A muffled "no" drifted from under the pillow.

He grabbed a chair, dragged it by the bed and sat down while extracting a Styrofoam cup from a paper bag.

He reached out for her shoulder and shook it gently.

"Come on, Scully, possums can't have coffee."

Slowly her head emerged from under its hiding place.

"It's alive!"

That earned him a nasty look.

Strands of copper hair were falling messily on her face and she blew them off with irritation.

She looked like Hell revamped by Helmut Newton.

She raised herself on one elbow and extended a commanding hand towards the coffee.

Yeah, definitely Newton...

Her pajama top was unbuttoned far lower than it should have been, leaving very little to the imagination - well, nothing in fact.

Mulder set the coffee on the nightstand.

And reached out towards her.

She threw him a startled look.

Before she even had time to react he was slipping the buttons back into place. "Great view, Scully, but you're gonna catch cold if you stay like that."

She drew back from him sharply, lifting a hand to her collar and holding it shut. Caught off-guard, she didn't have time to prevent her sudden blush. 

Mulder was leaning back on his chair, grinning at her like a lunatic. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to knock his teeth out, one by one.

After coffee maybe.

She sat up against the headboard and reached for the cup.

"Why are you here, Mulder?" she asked dryly.

"I was running by. I thought I'd just drop by and say hello."

She took a sip from her coffee. "Cut the crap Mulder, you couldn't have run all this way from home."

"True, Scully, and I didn't. I started from Diana's."

She nodded, staring straight ahead. "I see."

An uncomfortable silence settled between them.

"Scully?"

(Please no). She prayed he would leave her alone. She really didn't want to have 'The Talk'.

"Umm?" Her gaze remained fixed on the opposite wall.

"Can I use your bathroom?"

She barely managed to suppress a sigh of relief. "Sure."

She let her gaze follow his partner's backside, as he moved towards the door. (Nice. Very nice... but not for you.)

She didn't need to be reminded of that. She closed her eyes and let the coffee warm her hands. She felt cold suddenly.

Mulder was in the process of washing his hands, when something near the sink caught his attention. He took the small brown bottle and studied the label.

His heart sank. No wonder she had trouble waking up.

~~~

 

Scully felt something land on the blanket. The small object rolled by her elbow. She looked at it, startled. 

She looked up to meet her partner's cold, hard stare.

"What's that, Scully?"

"Sleeping pills," she answered matter of factly.

Mulder stepped forward, looming threateningly over her. "I know what they are." He pointed an accusing finger towards the bottle, "I also know this stuff is strong enough to knock out a rabid elephant!"

She clenched her teeth, held his gaze stubbornly. "So why do you ask?"

"Fuck, Scully!" he waved his arms like a broken windmill. "How can I rely on a partner who's a walking zombie?!"

"I only take them at weekends."

He took a deep breath, sat on the bed, his eyes never leaving hers. "And what do you do the rest of the week?"

This time, she looked away.

He grabbed her wrist roughly. "Talk to me."

Her eyes focused on him again, this time shining with thinly veiled contempt. He knew he had just betrayed the Second Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Ask Personal Questions Of Thy Partner.

"This is none of your business, Mulder."

"It is if your personal problems are endangering our job."

"They haven't."

"Not yet."

"Let go of me."

"No."

"Mulder-" It was a warning.

"Not before you tell me what the Hell is going on with you!" 

She yanked her arm away with a strength that surprised him, jumped out of bed and ran out of the bedroom. The bathroom door slammed so loudly that the soles of his feet felt the vibration on the wooden floor.

It dawned on him that maybe, just maybe, this wasn't the right method.

(Time for plan B, clever boy.)

OKay, right, plan B, which would be? Oh well - time to improvise.

He headed for the bathroom and knocked softly at the door.

"Scully?"

Nothing.

"Scully, I'm sorry."

"Leave me alone, Mulder."

"Listen, I really think you should talk to someone about what you're going through."

"I'm not going through anything."

He leaned his forehead against the cool wood of the door. Denialogy... Magna Cum Laude.

(Tell her what she needs to hear.)

His photographic memory selected a few snapshots of his partner over the last few months and analyzed the differences, all the little things about the way she looked, the way she held herself, the way her eyes absorbed the light. All the details he hadn't been paying much attention to, because, truth be told, on a day-to-day basis, he didn't care much about people.

Or if he did, it was in his own twisted way.

He cared about her the way people care about a war memorial. She was his precious, smooth, hard and unflinching monument - commemorating all the things he'd ever fucked up.

(Tell her what she needs to hear.)

He straightened up.

"You think I don't notice, Scully?" He paused. "You think I don't see how much weight you've lost? See the dark shadows under your eyes? How silent you've become?"

Not a sound was coming from the other side.

"You think I don't care?" he continued, "you think that as long as you're doing your job, I won't mind the pain in your eyes. I won't mind never seeing you smile?" 

He waited a few more seconds.

"Open that door, Scully - please?"

Seconds flew, punctuated by his heartbeat. Then he heard the click of the lock being drawn back. The door opened and she was standing in front of him, looking at her feet.

He lifted her chin gently, and suddenly wasn't so sure he could deal with the situation. She was crying. Plan B had worked a little too well.

So he went on gut instinct, and wrapped her in his arms. She went willingly, her arms circling his waist.

At least he had the decency to feel bad about it.

He rested his chin on top of her head, feeling her silent sobs shake them both.

"Shall we forget the previous argument and start from the beginning?"

She nodded against his chest.

He led her towards the living room, sat her down on the couch. He left her for a few minutes, grabbed a box of tissues from the bathroom then went to the kitchen and poured some orange juice in a glass.

 (aren't you the perfect gentleman?) 

He came back, sat next to her and handed her both items. She blew her nose, wiped her tears, and obediently took a small sip from the glass before putting it down on the coffee table.

"You OK?"

She nodded, took a deep breath and faced him. "I don't know where to begin, Mulder."

"Well, maybe we should start with the symptoms, don't you think, Doctor Scully?"

She gave him a self-conscious thin-lipped smile. "Loss of appetite, headaches, stomach-aches, nightmares, nausea," she enumerated in a clinical tone.

Mulder nodded. "Depression."

"Tell me something I _don't_ know, Mulder."

"It's not surprising."

"Isn't it?" she replied bitterly.

He hesitated. "Do you know what the catalyst was?"

She nodded weakly but didn't utter a single word.

He reached for her hand.

She lifted her head and pinned him with a gaze filled with pain and apologies. She didn't have to say it. They both knew the answer to that question.

Minutes flew. She withdrew her hand and lowered her chin. "I don't know what's wrong with me, Mulder," she whispered.

" Well,' frozen in a pod on a Mother Ship' is only the last item of a long list, Scully. There's only so much the human psyche can take - and we're not exactly living normal lives."

Her gaze met his again, shyly. "No we're not. But I'm glad at least one of us is willing to try..."

Mulder understood what she was so desperately trying to say. He laid his hand on her shoulder. "But it doesn't mean that I'm going to leave you behind."

"I know."

"No you don't. You think I've left you alone."

She shook her head. "That's not true."

He chuckled. "Scully... you're a terrible liar, stop trying."

He saw her bite the inside of her cheek before shooting him a mild glare.

"What you've experienced is taking its toll," he kept on, "I know you're so goddamned stubborn that you would rather die than ask for support, but I won't let you, not this time."

She smirked. Mulder promising a non-ditch behavior? Bring the champagne! "What do you intend to do? Come at night and sing me lullabies?"

He laughed. "If I have to. But to begin with, I want you to start talking to me again. I want you to call me when you have nightmares and tell me about them. I am not going to invade your privacy, Scully, I know how much you need space. But I want you to know that I'm here for you, and that I am not going to think less of you because you need someone to listen."

He firmly took hold of both her shoulders and looked at her with an equally firm gaze. "Deal?"

She shrugged. He could feel the steel rope tension in the set of her shoulders.

"I'll try," she said at last.

~~~

 

A month went by and he almost believed things had gone back to normal. No, strike that, not normal, but they had almost regular office hours, were still used as a team, even if now they dealt with average cases. If you could call dealing with petty criminals, child molesters and your garden variety of psychopaths "average". 

But compared to the life they used to have, it was a drastic change of pace. Fowley and Spender were taking care of the X-Files now. He should still be pissed off about it, but since he was sleeping with the boss of the new Spooky Patrol, he managed to keep in touch with the cases. His role of Eminence Grise suited him just fine, and he knew nothing would stop him from jumping on the train when the Syndicate showed its hydra's head again.

They solved mundane cases with the regularity of a Swiss watch. He profiled, she did the autopsies -- a match made in heaven. Except... their colleagues were avoiding them like the plague by the water cooler; they were looked at with sideways glances as if they both had the Number of the Beast tattooed on their forehead.

The main improvement being that Scully looked fine - then again maybe she wasn't such a bad liar after all.

~~~

"Mulder?"

The erratic breathing at the other end told her that she really had chosen the *worst* moment to call. "Sc-Scully?"

"I'm sorry, Mulder, I - I just wanted to... never mind."

She hung up, her cheeks flaming. She had decided for the first time to take Mulder up on his offer, because she knew he thought she never would.

She'd wanted to experiment, out of sheer boredom - or so she told herself.

Only, her timing had sucked...

She shut her eyes, trying to ward off the analogy her last thought had conjured up. Agent Fowley was the last person she wanted to think about at the moment.

Scully was trying to get through her private hell alone. She hated asking for help, she hated the drugs, which dulled the pain but fogged her brain, and since she disliked talking to strangers about personal issues, she'd given up on any thought of counseling. Besides, she doubted all the Karen Kossefs in the world could make any difference right now.

She wanted to sleep and wake up in a hundred years; she wanted to forget that she was the thirty-something barren mother of a dead mutant offspring, with an alien chip in her neck.

Even Mulder, who wasn't exactly Mr. Sanity Of The Year, had backed away in front of the pitiful freak she'd become.

The boy must be worshipping that bee.

On second thoughts, drugs didn't seem like such a bad option...

***

An hour later, she heard noises inside her flat. She hoped it was him, but at this point she just couldn't care anymore. She was floating in a drug-induced lethargy. Her body was heavy, she felt euphoric and she felt good, so good.

The door opened and a stream of light burst through it. She closed her eyes.

"Scully?"

Mulder approached and leaned over her limp form sprawled on the bed, arms extended, Christ fashion. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling.

He reached for her hand. "Hey, Scully? You OK?"

"Uh, uh." Her head lolled from one side to the other, still smiling blindly at him.

He sighed wearily. "What did you take this time?"

She stretched languidly. "Good stuff."

"I don't doubt it," he growled.

He grabbed the innocent-looking bottle by the bed, read the label and winced. "How many did you take, Scully?"

"Dunno..."

"More than one?"

"Uhmmm, maybe." She was smiling beatifically at him, but her eyes remained closed, head rocking slightly, following some internal rhythm.

He straightened up. "Right. I'm afraid you don't leave me much choice. Come on!"

He slid his hands under her shoulders and knees and lifted her from the bed. She giggled and snuggled against him with a contented sigh, her little fingers locking behind his neck. He headed towards the bathroom.

"One's not enough, Mulder?" she slurred against his chest.

He couldn't help but smile. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not Superman, Agent Scully."

Her fingers flexed slightly against his neck. And then a husky murmur, exhaled against his shirt: "Too bad."

"Scully!" he scolded in a half-outraged half-amused tone.

She lifted her head slowly and opened unfocussed and cloudy eyes. "Is she worth it, Mulder?"

God, she was really out of it. "You don't know what you're saying, Scully."

She snorted and dropped her head again. "Yeah, don't know a thing, damn right you are," she paused and rubbed her cheek against his shirt, "not that I don't want to," she added. 

He entered the bathroom and dropped her in the bathtub.

"Oooh Mulder, are we having a bath? Kinky."

"No, milady, _you_ are having a cold shower." With these words he grabbed the hand shower and turned the tap on.

She gasped as the cold water hit her full blast. She looked stunned for a while. Then, as she gradually became fully conscious, she raised herself in the tub, spluttering and coughing. She pushed him away with both hands. "Mulder! Stop! Stop this immediately!" 

She was drenched and looked furious, all in all, a familiar sight.

He turned off the water. "Sorry, but as I said, you didn't leave me much choice."

"Get out!" she snarled.

"I'll get you some dry clothes."

"GET OUT!"

He hurried to comply. There was no point in arguing with Dana Scully in Wyatt Earp mode. He wasn't worried though, because this was something he could handle, unlike the lascivious creature who had her warm little body pressed so softly against his just moments ago. What was the operative word again? Oh yeah, platonic... must remember that one.

He went into the living room and sat down on the sofa, waiting for her.

She came out almost immediately, wrapped in a white terry cloth bathrobe. She eyed him with the disgusted caution she usually reserved for deadly viruses and rotting corpses, and headed towards the kitchen without a word.

She was obviously sulking.

He stood up and followed her. "Feeling better?" he asked, leaning against the door frame.

She was reaching up for a glass in the cupboard. She grabbed it and slammed it down on the counter. She swung around and glared at him. "Why did you do that?"

"I could ask you the same question."

"What I do or don't do outside the Bureau is none of your business!"

"You called me!"

"It was a mistake! You were obviously," she waved a hand dismissively, "busy."

"Jealousy doesn't suit you, Scully."

She did not reply to that.

"I'm not some little girl that you can bully around, Mulder!"

"So stop acting like one and get rid of this crap you're taking!"

"I'm a doctor, Mulder. I am fully aware of the effects of the medication I'm taking."

He let out a sharp laugh. "Including the 'wanna-jump-your-partner' effect?"

"What?"

"Don't you dare tell me amnesia is one of the side effects, Scully!"

She blinked once, twice, obviously trying to recall the previous events, and when her eyes widened in shock, he knew she just had. Next, he was expecting a deep blush and a guilty look aimed in the general vicinity of her toes.

He should have known better.

Well, there was a blush of sorts, but her eyes narrowed and faxed him an icy blue death sentence.

She spun on her heels and headed for the fridge.

Silence. Dana Scully's most lethal weapon.

He joined her by the fridge.

"So," he started conversationally, "shall we celebrate the first pass you made at me?"

She grabbed a carton of milk.

"Fuck you, Mulder."

"The second then."

She ignored him, shut the door, and returned to retrieve her glass. Mulder sighed. After six years, he still had no idea how to get through her when she acted like this; trying to lighten the mood with his usual banter obviously didn't work.

"I thought we'd agreed to talk, Scully."

Turning her back to him she poured some milk into her glass. "There's nothing to say."

A spark of anger ignited in his skull. "Right! There's never anything to say! You're always *fine*, aren't you, Scully?"

He saw her shoulders inch forward as if she was preparing herself to be hit, but she didn't move to face him.

"You never really talk, do you, Scully? Unless you're stoned or on your death-bed!"

Finally she turned around. She eyed him with a cold clinical restrain that freaked him out. "I think you should go, Mulder."

He wanted to strangle her, just to wipe off that air of superior disdain which told him exactly what she thought of the low blows he was using to get through to her.

"I think you're right."

Moments later the front door was slamming shut behind him.

Scully emptied her glass in the sink and made it just in time to the bathroom.

 

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS: to Cat, who made me a whole writer.
> 
> NOTES: I started writing this story in 1998. It was completed in 2000.
> 
> This was my first fanfiction. It started as a vignette stemming from a newsgroup discussion: "what would it take for M&S to do the naked pretzel in the FBI car park?" And then, well I just kept on writing. 
> 
> The version I am posting here is going to be slightly tidied up, now that my mastery of English is gooder ;-). There are many things I would change, were I to write something like this now, but I don't want to meddle with the original product too much either. HC is what it is, flaws and all. 
> 
> This story was discussed on the [X-F Book Club](http://xf-book-club.livejournal.com/46602.html).


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